Norman Lamb, the business minister, has claimed the News Corp lobbyist
Frederic Michel threatened that Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers would “turn
nasty” if the Coalition stood in the way of a takeover of BSkyB.

Mr Lamb told the Leveson Inquiry into media standards that he met Mr Michel twice in 2010, when Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, was in charge of scrutinising News Corp’s bid to buy the entire shareholding of the satellite broadcaster.

He said that during the second meeting, on Oct 27 that year, Mr Michel had made a “brazen” threat about what would happen if Mr Cable referred the bid to Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator.

The Liberal Democrat MP produced a note he had made of the “extraordinary encounter” at the time, in which he wrote: “They [News International] have been very supportive of Coalition. But if it goes the wrong way he is worried about the implications.

“It was brazen. VC refers case to Ofcom – they turn nasty.”

Mr Michel had also suggested The Sun and The Times would help the LibDems’ attempts to win last year’s referendum on the Alternative Vote system, but there were strings attached to his offer.

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“So refer case and implication was clear,” he wrote. “News Int turn against Coalition and AV.”

In another note, written after he had told his party leader Nick Clegg what Mr Michel had said, Mr Lamb wrote that Mr Clegg was “horrified by what I tell him of Fred Michel meeting – we will lose the only papers who have been positive”.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the Inquiry, told the hearing that Mr Michel denies any implied or explicit threats and denies linking political coverage in the newspapers to the success or otherwise of the BSkyB bid.